Met police to use remotely launched drones to bolster emergency response efforts
The Metropolitan Police is preparing to deploy remotely launched drones across London to support emergency response efforts.
A new trial will see these drones provide crucial intelligence to officers on the ground and in the central control room.
Drones that respond to 999 calls will be launched from the force’s control room and expertly controlled by trained operators.
They are expected to reach the scene within two minutes by broadcasting live footage directly to assist police personnel.
The Met said they would be used for a variety of events, such as searching for missing people, tracking a suspect or getting to a crime scene faster to collect evidence.
The new drones are faster, quieter, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than existing police helicopters, while providing the same operational effects, the Met said.
This new pilot, known as Drone First Response (DFR), is being introduced in London as part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) drone programme.
The project was first launched in Islington and the Met aims to expand the project to two more sites across London, covering the West End and Hyde Park, before the end of the year.
Deputy Commissioner Laurence Taylor, a national leader in drones, said: “We are building a Met that is more precise and efficient than ever before, and this new technology gives us a vital new tool in the fight against crime in the capital.”
He added: “Airborne support to policing has always added great value because it gives us the ability to make informed decisions about deployment and searching for people – which is much more difficult to do in the field.
“By having immediate response with a drone we will have more precise information, capturing the best evidence at the earliest opportunity, but most importantly, where scenes are chaotic or witnesses are confused, this allows us to make our own decisions about how many police officers we need to deploy, what units we need to deploy and more importantly if suspects or criminals are walking away from the scene we can quickly identify them and detain them without the need for a large, wide area we can get it. calls.”
He also said drones have traditionally been piloted by a person who must be able to see the drone at all times and watch it fly, but these “will fly themselves to a scene.”
A remote pilot can then take control of that drone and use it for policing purposes, after which the drone will fly autonomously back to its base, he added.
He said: “So it gives us more flexibility, more agility in our response and allows it to be much faster than you would normally get from a line-of-sight drone.”
Inspector Taryn Evans, who leads the NPCC Drones Program and led the Met pilot, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to bring the many benefits and efficiencies of the Drone First Responder Program to London and support both officer and community safety.
“We have been running trials of the program in several different police forces with a variety of working environments, from urban to rural, and the technology has proven to be a game changer in many cases.
“This pilot with Met brings together two years of our learning and development and I look forward to seeing how it can improve operational response.”
The force said the drones were located in special boxes on the roofs of selected police buildings, where they charged and awaited the call to launch.
The Met’s control room will make the decision to deploy a drone and it will be launched remotely to the incident.
When it flies over a scene, the drone’s images will be transmitted in real time to the specific control room or mobile user, thus supporting police response and recording footage as evidence.
At the end of the deployment, the drone will return to the landing area and the weatherproof box can be closed and charged and ready for its next mission.
The Met said other police forces, including Norfolk Constabulary, Cleveland Police, West Midlands Police, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary and Thames Valley Police Joint Operations Unit, were also trialling the NPCC-led technology.
